““As beings possessing reason, men “are all equal, and equals can have no right over each other,” wrote seventeenth-century English politician Algernon Sidney.26 Viewed from an Enlightenment perspective, individuals were not subjects who had a duty to bow to political and religious authorities. They were autonomous beings who possessed equal rights and should therefore be left free to think, to work, to trade, to pursue happiness and success here on earth.””
